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A psychometric battery of measures, assessing a range of problem areas, was completed by 140 convicted untreated child abusers. Measures were adjusted for social desirability. Cluster analysis of the data identified men on the basis of deviancy (levels of pro-offending attitudes and social inadequacy) and denial (self-reported levels of offending behaviors). Examination of offense histories found that high-deviancy men, compared to low-deviancy men, were more likely to have been convicted of a previous sexual offense; to have committed offenses against boys, or both boys and girls; to have committed extrafamilial, or both extra-and intrafamilial, offenses; and to have had many victims. A method of identifying deviancy, which showed good cross-validation, also was derived. Although low-deviancy men were much more likely to be incest offenders than were high-deviancy men, nearly 40% of high-deviancy men were found to be intrafamilial offenders, suggesting that identifying deviancy level may be a useful adjunct to any risk assessment.

Interviews with 28 sexual murderers were subjected to grounded theory analysis. Five implicit theories (ITs) were identified: dangerous world, male sex drive is uncontrollable, entitlement, women as sexual objects, and women as unknowable. These ITs were found to be identical to those identified in the literature as being present in rapists. The presence of dangerous world and male sex drive is uncontrollable were present, or absent, such that three groups could be identified: (a) dangerous world plus male sex drive is uncontrollable; (b) dangerous world, in the absence of male sex drive is uncontrollable; (c) male sex drive is uncontrollable in the absence of dangerous world. These three groups were found to differ in motivation: (a) were motivated by urges to rape and murder; (b) were motivated by grievance, resentment and/or anger toward women; (c) were motivated to sexually offend but were prepared to kill to avoid detection, or secure compliance.

An experiment is described which investigated cognitive inhibition in schizophrenia. It is noted that both the abnormal and cognitive literatures use the concept of inhibition. Frith (1979) suggests that the more cognitive symptoms of schizophrenia may be due to the failure to limit the current contents of consciousness due to a failure adequately to inhibit the output of preconscious processes. Current thinking in cognitive psychology suggests that in the process of selective attention there is active inhibition of distractor information. A technique used to investigate this is termed negative priming (Tipper, 1985). The general nature of this paradigm is as follows: if a distractor, which has been previously ignored, is response, due to inhibition of the information when it was originally a distractor. It was found that inhibition of such distracting information was reduced in schizophrenics. This finding is seen as providing some support for Frith's (1979) theory that the cognitive symptoms of schizophrenia are due to awareness of processes that normally occur preconsciously.